VPN's are essential these days, as most of our activities have been shifted to the online mode. VPN's ensure our online activities are safe and secure, and these are required by both individuals as well as businesses. In this article, we compare two VPN service providers that is TunnelBear Vs Windscribe, to give you a better idea about these providers.
An Overview
Windscribe is one such VPN service provider that is lacking the required attention. This VPN provider is quite different: it has the option of a build-a-plan that offers VPN services for just $2 a month along with features like the R.O.B.E.R.T. malware and the adblocker. On the contrary, TunnelBear is a very familiar VPN provider, however, does it stand up to its status? The performance of this service provider is not quite good in contrast to many other VPNs. Here, we compare TunnelBear Vs Windscribe on 9 different aspects to see who emerges a winner in that specific category. So, let us move towards the comparisons and see who wins the battle.
TunnelBearWindscribe, as well as TunnelBear, performed decently in the U.S. Windscribe definitely lead the battle in this country. However, Windscribe had a very low download speed in the UK but had a fast upload, whereas TunnelBear had great download speed but a very poor upload speed in the UK. In Hong Kong, both these VPNs had a decent performance, and TunnelBear won in this country.
Finally, when it came to Switzerland, both these VPNs saw a bit of improvement, with TunnelBear leading in this area. Though both Windscribe and TunnelBear will not be part of the list of fastest VPNs, they are quite usable for many activities on various servers that were tested. Even slow servers like the UK and Hong Kong could play 1080p videos quickly and were reasonably responsive.
Despite having twice the speed in the US in contrast to TunnelBear, Windscribe loses in this category due to the poor performance in other locations. It appears that Windscribe has emphasized more on the infrastructure of its U.S. network, and not focused much on other locations, which in turn affected its performance in the other locations. If you want to connect exclusively to the US, Windscribe will give you a better performance. But, TunnelBear has better overall speed and gives you a reliable performance all over the world.
Winner for Speed: TunnelBear wins this category.
Security:When you consider security and privacy at TunnelBear, there are not many options offered. TunnelBear makes use of the OpenVPN as its protocol on the majority of the devices. The only exception is users of iOS, who will be using the IPSec instead of the OpenVPN. Both are quite strong protocols, and OpenVPN is slightly preferred over the other. These two protocols are being paired with an AES-256 encryption irrespective of the device you use. This, in fact, is great encryption and provides exceptional security.
Windscribe offers its users a few protocol options, of which one is the OpenVPN protocol. However, remember that this isn't its default setting, as IKEv2 is the chosen protocol. Based on the industry standards, the chosen protocol is paired by Windsribe with the AES-256 encryption.
Privacy Policies:Both Windscribe and TunnelBear have privacy policies that focus on transparency and depict respect for their users. However, you must check the information that is logged by the VPN provider when you go through their privacy policies.
Windscribe gathers minimal user information, and this is restricted to your connection timestamps that generally are destroyed when the user disconnects and the data volume information that is held for 30 days. Technically, in Windscribe, you do not have to provide an email ID to get your account.
As far as TunnelBear is concerned, they claim to not maintain any logs. The logging of Tunnelbear doesn't include IP addresses or sites visited by the user, however, it collects operational data, like the operating system used by the user. This data is used for maintaining the network.
Though both these VPNs offer good VPN security - OpenVPN with the AES-256, Windscribe provides many extra options and gathers lesser user data in contrast to TunnelBear, thereby making it a winner in this category.
Winner- Security and Privacy Point for Windscribe
On the network of TunnelBear, Netflix was the sole geo-blocked website that could be accessed. Other websites like Hulu, BBC Iplayer, and Amazon detected the VPN, post which the VPN had to be turned off to watch any of these websites.
On the contrary, Windscribe, though earlier, was the best VPN Service to access Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, sadly it isn't the same anymore. On testing this VPN yet another time, this free server didn't provide access to any site's content inclusive of BBC iPlayer and Netflix.
The paid servers which are known as the "Windflix" servers, work just fine. The Windflix U.S. can access Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, and this helped Windscribe earn a spot earlier. Though these free servers cannot access Netflix anymore, the paid servers of Windscribe do a great job of passing through various VPN denial measures as well as getting access to geo-blocked content.
Winner for Streaming: Windscribe wins this category.
Both these VPN providers are quite torrenting-friendly, hence you needn't worry about whether torrenting is permitted by Windscribe or whether you will be in trouble if you use TunnelBear for your P2P downloads. In order to test the torrenting capability of each VPN, we downloaded a file of a 1.3GB test using each VPN.
TunnelBear-So, TunnelBear was pretty slow and needed 90 seconds to cross the barrier of 1MB/s. Post this, it boosted to 3MB/s and 4MB/s, and didn't go higher than 8MB/s. Using TunnelBear, the 1.3GB download could be completed in 5 minutes 45 seconds.
Windscribe-
On the other hand, Windscribe reached 2MB/s in just 30 seconds, which is pretty fast. It gained speed for the initial 2 minutes and then reached the cruising speed of 4MB/s and 7MB/s, with 10MB/s for smaller periods. The download was completed in 4 minutes 50 seconds. The testing was done by connecting the VPNs to the nearest server located in the US, where Windscribe was a winner in terms of performance. However, this cannot be an excuse for the torrenting performance of TunnelBear.
Winner for Torrenting: Windscribe wins this category.
When it comes to simultaneous connections, Windscribe is the Best VPN Service Provider. It permits unlimited connections on all the accounts. In contrast, TunnelBear offers its users just five connections for every account. Practically, Windscribe is unbeatable in this particular category.
Winner for Simultaneous Connections: Windscribe wins this category.
TunnelBear
TunnelBear has quite a small network of just 22 locations. The servers haven't been distributed well and a lot of emphasis is on Europe, thereby neglecting the Middle East and Africa.
Windscribe-
On the other hand, Windscribe has a bigger network and the servers are distributed in 59 countries, with many locations in these countries. This comes to the servers being distributed in approximately 110 cities. Windscribe's distribution is way better than that of TunnelBear. They also have the infrastructure to service the Middle East and Africa due to servers in Israel, the Emirates, Turkey as well as South Africa.
Winner: Server Locations Point for Windscribe
Windscribe as well as TunnelBear, both have similar plans and options, however, Windscribe beats TunnelBear at almost all levels. In the monthly option, Windscribe, as well as TunnelBear, provide unlimited data, however, the monthly price of TunnelBear is more than Windscribe by a dollar.
TunnelBear Pricing
The annual plans of TunnelBear cost a dollar more per month, too. Both these VPN providers give users a free plan, however, Windscribe free VPN has a lot more data.
- Free Plan: It is free of cost and offers 500MB data and includes 5 Devices.
- Unlimited: The plan offers Unlimited GB, includes five devices, offers priority customer service, and offers Bitcoin as a payment option.
- The 1-month plan- It costs you $ 9.99 a month.
- The 1-year plan- It costs you $ 4.99 a month. Every year you will be billed $59.88 and you can save around 50%.
- The 3-year plan- It costs you $ 3.33 a month. Every 3 years you will be billed $120.00, which saves you 67%.
- Team Plan: Under this, you get Unlimited GB bandwidth. It also offers five devices for every user, provides a centralized billing and account manager, and offers Bitcoin as a payment option. This costs you $ 5.75 a month
TunnelBear gives users of the free plan just 500MB data free of cost per month, whereas Windscribe offers its users about 10GB if the users confirm their email address.
Windscribe Pricing Plans-
Windscribe also offers a very unique plan option, known as the "build a plan." This allows the user to choose the servers they intend to use. This plan costs $1 a month for every server chosen by the user, with the minimum cost being $2 a month. This plan includes data of 10GB per server chosen by the user, or for unlimited data, there is an option of $1.
(i) 1-month plan: This will cost you $ 9.00 a month
(ii) 1-year plan- This will cost you $ 4.08 a month. You will be billed $49.00 every year and have a savings of 55 %.
In case you are not satisfied wit h the VPN post-purchase, there is a refund policy offered by Windscribe, wherein users get 7 days to return the product and get all their money back. On the contrary, there isn't any official refund policy provided by TunnelBear and its privacy policy indicates that the refund will be judged as per the case, which means that there isn't any guarantee of a refund when it comes to TunnelBear.
Winner for Pricing: Windscribe wins this category.
Both Windscribe and TunnelBear have clients that say VPNs are easy-to-use.
TunnelBear
TunnelBear has a huge interface that requires a lot of screen space. It has a map with tiny tunnels to indicate the location where the user can connect. TunnelBear also has an option to make the window smaller, however, the map has to be left out. This makes it better in contrast to the UI of Windscribe.
The settings menus of TunnelBear offer an explanation of every option, whereas Windscribe is quite functional in appearance. The settings menus of Windscribe are cluttered in contrast to TunnelBear, however, this is a sacrifice made for better user experience. A person who isn't very familiar with VPN service providers would prefer using TunnelBear due to the settings options having a lot of explanation on their usage. The interface of Windscribe is clean and streamlined, but it appears that this VPN targets those users who are tech-literate, as its layout is more functionality-driven.
Windscribe
Windscribe has a very minimalist interface and all the vital information is provided in a compact window. The desktop client of Windscribe is the smallest, and it saves on the screen space. It has just one dropdown menu to choose the location and it has a big connect button.
Winner for User-Friendliness: TunnelBear wins this category.
TunnelBear
TunnelBear doesn't have many fancy features. TunnelBear has almost each and everything preconfigured, thereby having very less added features. It has an ad blocker, but this is in fact only a free extension of the browser which has nothing to add to the VPN service. The blocker of Windscribe is not in-built in the software. It has to be set up from the account dashboard of the user.
Windscribe-
Windsribe's blocker is known as "R.O.B.E.R.T.," and it is powerful in contrast to the blocker of TunnelBear. It allows you to personalize the content that is to be blocked, which means that this ad blocker could be used for blocking of malware and ads, and it can be configured easily to block content such as gambling sites, porn, and publishers of fake news, based on the prebuilt lists of Windscribe. Windscribe also offers its users access to a specific tool - Secure.link. This allows you to evaluate and vet sites prior to visiting them by simply having a look at the kind of trackers that are available on that site without the need to actually visit the site.
Quick Links
Winner for Features: Windscribe wins this category.
Customer Reviews
TunnelBear
Conclusion-TunnelBear Vs Windscribe 2020- Which One is Best?
The battle of TunnelBear Vs Windscribe has given us a clear winner. Windscribe beat TunnelBear in seven of nine categories and there was a huge difference between the two VPN Service providers.
TunnelBear took a lead in the category of speed, however, it lost to Windscribe in the category of torrenting performance. Windscribe was surpassing TunnelBear in almost every single category, be it pricing, features, server locations, streaming performance, torrenting, or simultaneous devices.
If you have to choose between TunnelBear Vs Windscribe VPN providers, this article hopefully has made your decision a lot easier!
